****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
This is 1) a very good, very solid introduction to computer architecture, 2) humorous to the point of anarchy (yes, it comes with recipe for clam chowder), and 3) one of my favorite books about computers -- or anything else for that matter. Most computer books are horrible: main ideas are intimated or alluded to instead of stated, examples are confused with ideas and the ideas are left unsaid, tortured sentence constructions glue logically disjointed paragraphs together, and the job of grinding out the actual text is farmed out to flunki-- er, "copy editors" who have no direct knowledge of the topic. Yeah, I'm looking at *you* Cisco Press.Not so with this book. Funny and brutally succinct.On the downside, the software that it comes with may be showing its age; I think it was meant to run on Windows 95. I'm sure it works just fine in Wine. The chowder is pretty good too.